Marisa Tomei Will Play Gloria Steinem in an HBO Miniseries

Currently in the works at HBO: a miniseries about the history of iconic women's magazine Ms. and its founder, American feminist icon Gloria Steinmen. Up to play Steinem? None other than Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler, Crazy, Stupid, Love).

According to a report in The Wrap, "The miniseries will examine the creation of Ms. magazine in 1971 through the eyes of both the women who founded and ran it and those whose lives it changed during the world-altering early days of the Women's Movement."

Ms. originally appeared in the early 1970s as part of New York magazine—and was spun off into its own entity by cofounders Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

At the time, "I realized as a journalist that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women, and this caused me along with a number of other women to start Ms. magazine," Steinem once said in a documentary. The magazine's own "about" page describes the climate into which it first launched:

Ms. was a brazen act of independence in the 1970s. At the time, the fledgling feminist movement was either denigrated or dismissed in the mainstream media -- if it was mentioned at all. Most magazines for women were limited to advice about saving marriages, raising babies, or using the right cosmetics.

When the Ms. preview debuted, carrying articles on subjects such as the housewife's moment of truth, "de-sexing" the English language, and abortion, the syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick jeered that it was a "C-sharp on an untuned piano," a note "of petulance, of bitchiness, or nervous fingernails screeching across a blackboard."

And after the first regular issue hit the newsstands in July 1972, the network news anchor Harry Reasoner challenged, "I'll give it six months before they run out of things to say."